Lehmann Maupin, Gallery Wendi Norris To Feature Carrington, Vicuña

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Lehmann Maupin and Gallery Wendi Norris are collaborating on a two-part exhibition that will, for the first time, present the works of Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington and artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña together. The first installment of the exhibition, titled“Leonora Carrington & Cecilia Vicuña,” will debut at Lehmann Maupin in New York on November 19. The second part is scheduled to open at Gallery Wendi Norris in San Francisco in January.

Each gallery will feature a distinct checklist of works, tailored to the scale of its respective location, although some pieces will overlap between the two presentations. Dealer Wendi Norris initially proposed the exhibition idea to Rachel Lehmann, a co-founder of Lehmann Maupin, several years ago. Lehmann recalled the conversation after visiting Vicuña's solo exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) last November. That IMMA show was co-organized with the Whitechapel Gallery in London, where a version opened last week.

“Things sometimes take time until they sit in the right place,” Lehmann said. She reached out to Norris to explore the possibility of working together on the exhibition. Lehmann noted,“One of the things we do is try to position our artists in different ways, and [it] became suddenly so obvious to me that I had missed out actually on something with Wendi.”

Norris began representing Carrington in 2004, seven years before the artist's death in 2011 at the age of 94. Over the years, Norris has placed Carrington's work in intergenerational group exhibitions and staged re-enactments of her plays. However, this marks Norris's first exhibition to combine Carrington's Surrealist art with the work of a living contemporary artist.“I love putting Leonard Carrington's work in new context,” Norris told ARTnews.“I'm constantly trying to imagine how she would respond to things that we do, like this exhibition. One thing I feel I can say very certainly is that she would be overwhelmingly excited about an exhibition like this.”

The connection between Vicuña and Carrington predates this collaboration significantly. In 1969, Vicuña, then in her early 20s, met Carrington in Mexico City while returning to Chile after a trip to New York. In New York, Vicuña experienced“a vision [of] the painting that I needed to do,” she recounted. During their meeting, which was explored in the IMMA exhibition, Carrington provided Vicuña with advice that helped the younger artist“transfer” her vision to canvas, a process Vicuña later termed“Calcomanías.” Lehmann stated,“Carrington enables this transfer from the poetry of the very unusual or uncategorized forms into something which was very tangible, like a painting.”

Norris added,“The exhibition, I think, will enable viewers to delve deeper into Carrington's iconography and language, and the way it feels to read it, alongside Cecilia's. I, for one, am excited to see what it will uncover. I don't want to predict it because I'm excited about what I'm going to discover myself.”

The exhibition will feature new works by Vicuña alongside significant historical pieces by Carrington. In selecting works, the two galleries were guided by“the relationship that both artists had,” Lehmann said. She noted,“What has struck me most in speaking to Cecilia over the years was the influence that Carrington brought to her practice.” One of Vicuña's new paintings for the show is Polvo del Sahara/ Saharan Desert Dust ( 2026 ), an underwater scene depicting light reflecting into ocean depths, with a stone staircase leading beyond the horizon. Lehmann hopes the exhibition will illuminate not only Carrington's influence on Vicuña's paintings but also how“Cecilia continues Carrington's legacy.”

Norris described the process of building the checklists for each show as“an iterative process” over several months, involving the sharing of potential works and their contexts. Norris explained,“We were trying to think of Leonora's love of the environment, her sense of humor, and her hybrid creatures and how that might speak to some of the similarities we see in Cecilia's work,” adding that after each proposal, she would ask,“How does that land with you and your audience?” Norris has also considered which of Carrington's works to show in each venue, including two pieces from her 1990 show at the Brewster Gallery that have not been shown in New York since. One of these is Eye Witness ( 1987 ), a wintry landscape featuring two figures seemingly turning away from an apparition, with a skyscraper resembling the Empire State Building in the distance.

The two artists' work previously appeared in a single exhibition, the 2022 Venice Biennale, titled“The Milk of Dreams,” a phrase from one of Carrington's books. Vicuña received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement before the Biennale's opening. However, their works were displayed in separate sections of the Biennale, unlike this upcoming joint exhibition. Since the 2022 Biennale, Carrington's work has experienced a resurgence, featuring in two traveling surveys, one that opened at the Palazzo Reale di Milano in 2025 and another currently on view at the Faro Santander in Spain.

Beyond stylistic connections, Lehmann and Norris highlighted how the artists' reception has evolved, noting that both have only recently achieved widespread canonization.“This has been a long time coming for artists like Leonora and Cecilia,” Norris remarked.“I think Leonora probably knew it was coming but was nonplussed about it. She knew she was planting seeds, and they were going to bear fruit one day.”

Source: ARTnews

MENAFN12102026005694012507ID1111796452